Rogation and Ascension – Virgin Islands Daily News

First comes the festival (feast) day commemorating Jesus Resurrection (Easter) and our Creator Gods essential nature to rescue, deliver, and save.

Then 40 days later, we commemorate the Ascension to heavenly realms of highest esteem of the resurrected Christ and of all that Jesus stood and stands for.

Meanwhile, in preparation for the latter, many in Christendom historically have observed days of intense prayer and fasting that are called rogation (asking or pleading) and that are summed up more commonly nowadays in the observance of Rogation Sunday immediately preceding the Feast of the Ascension.

For many, this timing is especially appropriate, since by now, in Eastertide, our knowledge and understanding of, our faith in, and perhaps our personal experience of the Resurrection has been tested, tried, and solidified.

In Rogation and in the Ascension in this week ahead of us, we hasten to commend to God the Creator all that has been given to us. We give thanksgiving; we ask for protection now and in the future, and we ask for Divine blessing of all our godly endeavor.

In this way, Rogation Sunday and the traditional Rogation Days of the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday immediately preceding Ascension Day are not to be confused with the manifold, essentially retrospective Harvest celebrations toward the end of the summer and on into the fall.

As early as the Middle Ages, a Rogation practice called beating the bounds was revived from some Roman, or even earlier, pre-Christian antecedents, wherein church processions were launched, walking around a given congregations territory and affording all who have settled within a sense of place, a sense of profound thanksgiving and commitment and therewith a sense of Christian obligation (to love and to serve).

However, on the negative side, a churchs beating of its bounds or territorial boundary markers was sometimes also used to draw lines establishing a public understanding of the territory upon which other faith communities should not encroach.

Nowadays, the reach of such Rogation processions tends to be less territorial, and instead tends to be accomplished more through the breadth of the remembrances and other references in our prayers, including our prayers sung as hymns.

Our Rogation Day prayers in common use for protection and continual blessing, and prayers of commitment are found in the Rogation Day Collects (see Book of Common Prayer 258-59) for fruitful seasons, for commerce and industry, and for stewardship of creation.

Much the same can be found in Joseph Addisons 18th century hymn, drawing on the opening verses of Psalm 19, and hence beginning, The spacious firmament on high familiar especially when set to the central theme of Franz Joseph Haydns 18th century oratorio, The Creation.

For my 21st-century taste, however, I find even grander expression of the territorial sweep of our Rogation prayers in Herbert Brokerings 20th-century hymn set to David Johnsons 20th-century music as Earth and All Stars.

Appropriately lengthy, to accompany procession outdoors and/or indoors without tedious repetition, the references in this last reach, to name but a few, loud rushing planets O victory, loud shouting army flowers and trees, loud rustling dry leaves trumpet and pipes, loud clashing cymbals engines and steel, loud pounding hammers limestone and beams, loud building workers classrooms and labs, loud boiling test-tubes knowledge and truth, loud sounding wisdom (and finally) loud praying members true, earnest, comprehensive rogation. All sing to the Lord a new song, (for) He has done marvelous things. I (or we) too will praise him with a new song!

All of this adoration appropriately proclaims our appreciation and thanksgiving for what is and our faith-filled hope for what is to come.

However, as we find boldly prophesied in the biblical description of the Ascension (Acts 1:8-11), with the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost 50 days after Jesus glorious Resurrection, we will have received power to be Jesus witnesses throughout the world.

And indeed, men dressed in white note importantly that these are men, not necessarily angels, as our focus is directed from the skies to the earth these men in purifying white, these witnessing human interpreters chide us, in Acts 1:11, in a manner that I would paraphrase as follows: Why do you just stand there, albeit with wondrous adoration, gazing up toward heaven?

This same Jesus, who has now ascended with his glorious message, spoken and lived out, will come again in the same way all at once and hold us to account for what he asked: that empowered with the gift of the Holy Spirit, we be his convincing witnesses, everywhere we go, not just worshiping, but also doing the work of the Gospel. More simply: Enough gazing albeit in adoration Now get down to work!

As Jeffery Rowthorn in the middle of the 20th century summed up, aggregating the accounts of Jesus Ascension on and hence from: Lord, you give the Great Commission: Heal the sick and preach the Word. Lest the Church neglect its mission and the Gospel go unheard, help us witness to your purpose with renewed integrity; with the Spirits gifts empower us (all) for the work of ministry.

The Rev. Dr. Wesley S. Williams Jr., K.St.J. is Bishops sub-dean for St. Thomas and St. John and vicar of Nazareth by the Sea Episcopal Church in the Diocese of the Virgin Islands (U.S. and U.K.) and chairman of SRMC All Faiths Hospital Chaplaincy

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Rogation and Ascension - Virgin Islands Daily News